A Calculus of Angels

by J. Gregory Keyes

  “Red, in that case. You see how desperately I needed you?”

  She ignored that, continuing to paw through his wardrobe. “And for your coat …” She pushed through a few and then pulled out a rather full-skirted coat of watered black silk. Starting to hand it to him, she frowned and reached back in. “No,” she said, “I should like to see you in these, first.” And she handed him a pair of black knee breeches with scarlet bows.

  Ben accepted them, stepping a bit closer to do so. “I have not met you before,” he said. “I wonder if you would tell me your name.”

  She raised her eyes to meet his, and they were nearly black. “I am a servant, sir, and so what need have I of a name? Call me what you will.”

  “There’s no need to be unpleasant,” Ben remarked.

  “Was I unpleasant? I hoped to be accommodating.” Her smile was bright and probably false as she returned to selecting clothes for him.

  A sort of funny feeling rumbled in Ben’s stomach, a slight vertigo, an uncertainty. He thought furiously for something else to say, but his throat remained empty of words until she had laid out the last of his suit. He pulled the breeches on, suddenly feeling foolish. “Thank you,” he finally managed.

  “You are welcome, sir.”

  “Please call me Ben.”

  At that she only smiled enigmatically, returning to her work, leaving him feeling as stupid as a child.

  5.

  London

  “Goddamn,” Blackbeard muttered, tugging at his braided beard, and then more forcefully,“ Goddamn. Where’s the Thames?” The pirate shook his fists at the coastline. Red Shoes stared at the brackish mudflat, verdigris with sickly and crouching scrub, trying to understand what the problem was. It bothered him that there were no trees anywhere—it was alien to his eye—but he had gathered in his time among Europeans that trees were scarce in Europe.

  “The longitude and the latitude are correct,” Thomas Nairne insisted. “Of that I have no doubt.”

  “No? Then where’n hell is the river?”

  Red Shoes turned to study Nairne and caught him staring sourly at Blackbeard’s back. Beyond Nairne the Pale Water stretched endless as time, dwarfing the remainder of the ships in their flotilla. They were eight, all told, and to Red Shoes they had once made an impressive sight, each larger than anything made by his own people. Swallowed by sea and sky for two months they had diminished in his eyes, and now, come to this strange, dead shore, they seemed smaller than ever, bubbles in the eddy of a swift stream.

  They had sailed toward Sun-Emerging, a direction where his people had always believed the sources of life were. And yet this place more resembled legends of the Darkening Land, where the sun dies. Even with his ghost vision he saw nothing save a few birds. It worried him, this place.

  And the Europeans were confused, too. This wasn’t what they had expected either.

  “But them’s the cliffs, han’t it?” one stout, knot-nosed sailor—everyone called him Tug—muttered.

  “Aye,” Blackbeard assented. “But not one damn house, not one single church steeple, not a tower, nor nothing, an’ we’ve been on this coast for days. An’ this looks something like the mouth of the Thames—but where is the river?”

  “Could it have been stopped?” Red Shoes asked quietly. “The river—could it have been dammed up?”

  Blackbeard shot him a withering glance, and to Red Shoes’ surprise, he saw the rage there mixed liberally with what must be fear. In his experience, if Blackbeard was afraid, then the rest of them ought to be terrified.

  “You don’t know what a mad thing that is to say, Choctaw.”

  “Stupid In’yun,” Tug added.

  “Nevertheless,” Nairne quietly put in, “it is a possibility.”

  “Why? What army could do this? Raze all the buildings on the coast, yes, but steal the Goddamned Thames?”

  “The latitude and longitude are correct,” Nairne insisted, voice determined. “This is—or was—the mouth of the Thames. London lies yonder.” He pointed west and north.

  “Well then”—Blackbeard scowled—“you’re the overlander. You go find it. And while you’re at it, find me a port, before the men mutiny over lack of food and rum.”

  “We need to talk with Bienville and Mather, first.”

  “By my leave,” Blackbeard grunted, still staring at the shore. “Invite Bienville over.”

  Bienville shook his head and took another puff from his pipe. “I am loath to send my men there,” he said. “Better that we sail on until we find some sign of life.”

  Blackbeard, red eyed, downed another cup of Portuguese wine, his eighth. “You mean sail on to France?”

  “Yes, that is precisely what I mean. If this is truly the mouth of the Thames, then the world has gone more mad than ever we thought. It is safer for us to stay in numbers until we have some idea what has befallen here. If the coast of England is silent, perhaps in France we will find answers.”

  “More answers generally are gotten from the murderer than the murdered, though perhaps not truthful answers.”

  Bienville reddened and blinked angrily. “Sir, I suggest you restrain yourself from drawing conclusions. If this expedition is to stay of a piece—”

  “If you want it of a piece, then give me command of your men.”

  “That was not the agreement, as well you know, Mr. Teach,” Cotton Mather interrupted, clasping his hands together on the table they all sat around. He had been sickly for most of the voyage, and his voice still shook a bit, but his words were firm enough. “This armada is governed by council, something that you should also keep in mind, Monsieur Bienville.”

  “I have not forgotten it, sir. I was only making a suggestion.”

  Mather nodded. “You are a gentleman, Monsieur, and I do not doubt your word. Nor do I doubt your commitment to this flotilla. We will sail to France, on that we are all agreed. It is just a matter of when. For now, as we are here, I believe a closer look at England—by a small number of men—prudent.”

  Bienville nodded thoughtfully and glanced at Red Shoes. “And you, sir? You are a part of this council as well.”

  Red Shoes blinked. That had been said, of course, but this was the first time he had been consulted on anything since the voyage began.

  “I think it a bad idea to set foot here,” he said at last.

  “Why is that?” Mather asked mildly, perhaps with a trace of annoyance.

  “It is not right, this place. I see that you are all afraid, and I know these are not just my feelings.”

  He did not mention the other thing: that he had sent a shadowchild to reconnoiter, that it had died somehow, that the loss haunted him deep. It would only anger Mather.

  “I find little sense in that,” Mather said, a trifle coolly, “but thank you for your opinion. Gentlemen?”

  Bienville sighed. “Choose your men, and I will furnish a matching number.”

  “Agreed,” Blackbeard said. “And who shall command the trek across land?”

  “I will,” Mather said quietly.

  “You?”

  “Yes, me. I am the only man of science among you, the only member of the Royal Society. We have here a puzzle, gentlemen, and it is, I believe, a scientific one. I shall go, and the governor’s men with me.”

  “Well, the whole council represented on foot then,” Blackbeard noted. “And so who will you send for your people, Choctaw, into this land that is ‘not right’?”

  There was, of course, only one answer to that.

  The earth beneath the grass was as black as charcoal. In fact, it was charcoal, as Mather noticed almost immediately.

  “Evidence of conflagration,” he murmured.

  “You mean ’twas burnt,” Tug said, looking about worriedly at the featureless landscape.

  “Burnt, yes. But by what?”

  “Fire, I’d expect,” Tug answered nervously.

  “Yes, one would expect that. Captain Nairne, which way?”

  “London should li
e in that direction,” Nairne replied, pointing.

  “We are to be as quick as we can,” a third man reminded them, one Lieutenant du Rue, a rather frail-looking Frenchman in a plain blue coat. His hand stayed nearly constantly on the wire-wound hilt of his colichemarde as his eyes picked suspiciously at the landscape.

  They were ten in all. Nairne, Tug, and a compact black man named Fernando made up Blackbeard’s portion; du Rue and two stocky Normans, Saint-Pierre and Renard, the French. Mather was accompanied by two soldiers from Philadelphia: a hulking but amiable fellow named Charles and a tough man with straw-colored hair who went by the name of Wallace. And then, of course, there was himself.

  “So you’ve discovered England,” Nairne whispered to him. “What do you think?”

  Red Shoes grinned slightly. “I meant to claim it for the Six-towns, but I wonder now what would be the point.”

  “We shall find the point, I hope,” Nairne said and took the lead.

  They kept to the higher ground, skirting the noisome fens on the west, and for a few hours found or saw nothing remarkable. But then Mather, who walked somewhat stooped, as if reading the ground, grunted.

  “Look here,” he said, and held up a brick.

  Soon enough they found many more bricks and building stones, most shattered and blackened. After a time they found something more.

  “Foundations,” Nairne observed. Red Shoes had guessed that as well, for here he noticed the land touched by white man’s squareness again, though now reduced to walls a few inches high. Some had lost their regularity, cut into pieces by something that had incised a furrow in the earth that went on for as far as they could see. In other places the ground was dished out, as if poked by a giant’s finger.

  “Could have been Tilbury. Or Sheerness.”

  “God’s balls, I don’t like this,” Tug said, gaping. “No sair, not a Goddamn bit!”

  “Hush your blasphemy,” Mather snapped, eyes suddenly blazing.

  “Sorry, Reverend. But this is the sort o’ thing’ll upset a man.”

  “It is nothing next to God’s wrath,” Mather reminded him.

  “Indeed,” du Rue said. “But suppose this was God’s wrath?”

  Mather shrugged. “Everything is a part of God’s plan, and so this—whatever it is—surely is. If He is willing, we will understand something of it.”

  “I feared for London before,” Nairne said grimly. “How much more so now.”

  “All things are judged in their time,” Mather replied enigmatically.

  The land became more blasted as they went, the vegetation ever more spotty, until they crossed a lifeless plain of soft white stone that Mather called chalk. To Red Shoes it was bone, the skeleton of a dead land, picked clean by buzzards.

  The sun’s funeral went unnoticed as gray, drizzling sky became black. They huddled beneath canvas tarps on that plain, glum and almost without conversation. Near midnight the rain finally stopped, and he stepped into the damp air, carefully placed a measure of Ancient Tobacco in his pipe, and filled his lungs with living smoke. Eyes closed, he chanted lightly beneath his breath, opening his ghost eyes and ears, searching. At first nothing came, but then a distant chittering. He stayed at the edge of it, not wanting them to notice him. Over the years he had become good at listening without being heard, a mouse, and had thus learned a great deal about spirits. If he would learn more, he would have to risk more.

  He would not do that tonight. His shadowchild was dead and he did not yet have the strength to create another. If they found him, he would be defenseless, and he had seen what happened to those who were caught, their minds turned inside out by the Na Lusa Falaya. He had discovered what he wanted to know: as dead as this place was of people and animals, it was very much alive with spirits. He could not know their intentions, but his heart warned him not to expect anything good from them.

  “Why don’ you hush up so’s we can sleep?” a voice growled from nearby. It was Tug, a brutish shadow a few paces distant.

  “I apologize if I bothered you,” Red Shoes said.

  “Your sort, always singin’ to the damn devil, han’t you? What’re you doin’ here, In’yun? Why come this whole damn way? Hopin’ to roger a white woman, maybe? Think you’ll have more luck here than wi’ them nuns down Looweeanna way?”

  “I came because I had to,” Red Shoes explained.

  “Uh-huh. Well, I’ll tell ya this. You hain’t gettin’ in back a’ old Tug. You stay clear o’ me, hear? These fancy types like Nairne and Mather might give pretense as they believe you dependable, but Tug knows savages. One minute all nice and the next slittin’ yer throat an’ thrummin’ yer corpse. So keep where I can see you.”

  “I’ll try to,” Red Shoes said coldly.

  * * *

  Red Shoes had been into the Cherokee country before and seen mountains, but the one they encountered the next morning was like nothing he had ever imagined. It looked more like a wall than a mountain, an almost perfectly regular line against the sky, cutting nearly the whole horizon. As they approached it, the stone beneath their feet turned up gradually to meet the slightly serrated line, and then ever more sharply. The stone itself was blistered, in places glassy.

  “What do you make of this, Reverend Mather?” Thomas Nairne asked quietly.

  The older man shook his head almost imperceptibly. Sweat stood out on his brow, and Red Shoes wondered if it was from exertion or fear.

  “At least we can see what happened to the river,” du Rue offered. “This wall—or mountain, or whatever it may be—has stopped its progress, or at least redirected it.”

  “What could do such a thin’? God help us.” Tug shivered. He looked shyly at Mather. “Reverend,” he said, “I do repent of my earlier blasphemy. Would you—I mean to say, could we pray?”

  “Were you raised Puritan?”

  “No, sair. But as you’re the only man of God hereabouts …”

  The rest of them waited while the two of them and the governor’s men prayed. Saint-Pierre, apart from the rest, prayed as well, fingering his rosary while his companion Renard merely rolled his eyes heavenward. Nairne folded his arms impatiently and joined Red Shoes in contemplating the strange horizon.

  It was hard work reaching the summit, and in some places would have been impossible. They had the good fortune to locate a sort of crack in the side of the mountain that gave them egress. Nairne tried to convince Mather to let the younger men go on and bring report, but the Puritan would have none of that, and so their progress was limited to his speed. It was thus nearly an hour from sundown when they finally reached the summit.

  But it was no summit; it was a rim. Only an arm’s span wide, the mountain sloped down even more steeply than on its other side. The narrow edge curved away and slightly inward from them, misting in the distance. Below lay a valley that Red Shoes guessed to be the shape of a gigantic bowl.

  For long moments, no one said anything, until Nairne managed to whisper in a brittle voice, “Gentlemen, there lies London.” Tears streamed down his face.

  A muffled choking sound betokened Tug weeping, too.

  “Pardieu,” du Rue muttered. “Angleterre c’est passé.”

  Tug’s sobs suddenly turned into a snarl. “Fu’t y’, Frenchman!” he shrieked, and while the rest stood stupefied, flung himself at the officer. Du Rue half turned to meet the enraged sailor, hand barely to his sword when Tug struck him. The two grappled for an instant and then plunged inward over the rim, striking hard, bouncing and sliding thirty yards. All around Red Shoes swords and pistols snaked out as the remaining two Frenchmen faced off against the English pirates and colonists. The tableaux locked that way for a few moments.

  “Put those up,” Nairne shouted. “All of you.” His voice carried a firm snap of command.

  “For God’s sake, yes,” Mather added.

  Red Shoes peered down. Tug and du Rue lay perhaps twenty feet apart, both moving feebly.

  “Tug!” Nairne shouted down. “Stop that dam
n nonsense.” He turned back to the others, found them still eyeing one another over their weapons. “You, too. The truce still holds.”

  “If you please, sir,” Renard said, “my companion and I are outnumbered, and the aggression was on your own side. I respectfully suggest that English steel be covered first.”

  Nairne stared at them, and then drew forth his kraftpistole, an ugly, dangerous-looking weapon.

  “All of you put up your toys by the count of three, or someone—English or French, I care not—dies.”

  “Perhaps they should keep them out,” Red Shoes said.

  “What?”

  He pointed. Along the rim, from both directions, dark figures hurried toward them, hooting like distant owls. Out across the valley floor, red lights rose like fireflies.

  “I want two guns on each side,” Nairne commanded.

  “What about Tug?” Fernando asked, nodding toward where the sailor and du Rue were weakly struggling up the slick side of the hill.

  “The best we can do for them is to hold this position,” Nairne observed. “Fernando, you’ll hack anyone who gets close to the musketeers.”

  “Aye.”

  “I wonder who or what they are,” Renard remarked, sighting down the barrel of his musket.

  Red Shoes regarded the approaching figures, wondering the same thing. They seemed naked, or nearly so. Some of them had a bluish or blackish cast to their skin. All bore weapons—swords, axes, clubs. Except for their white hair, they might have been Chickasaw or Natchez, or any other of the traditional enemies of the Choctaw.

  “Their intentions seem clear,” Nairne said. “Shoot as soon as you can hit one.”

  “That would be about now,” Renard said, squeezing the trigger. The shot boomed hollowly in the vast bowl.

  The lead figure on that side pitched squealing into the valley.

  “But wha’ abou’ them?” Fernando asked, gesturing at the glowing balls of flame rising all around.